I suspect that many of you, like me, have been super-confused about the recent announcements by the DfE and Gove, repealing a load of decisions around exams and the EBacc. All I really wanted to know was what does this mean for computer science and the curriculum – well that and general confusion over my daughters’ exams, but let’s focus on CS.

Today I received an email from Theo Blackwell at Next Gen Skills, a wonderful man working with Ian Livingstone et al (and lobbying hard for this) explaining it. I thought I would share the salient point here to assist the baffled (myself included)

English Baccalaureate

There has been some confusion in the press about the English-Baccalaureate and English Baccalaureate Certificates (EBCs). EBCs, according to today’s announcement, have been scrapped not the English Baccalaureate as a performance measure.

Computer Science is still counted as one the E-Bacc performance measure options, which is what was announced last week and what we campaigned for. This counts how many pupils have obtained a grade C or above in a range of GCSEs and Computer Science now counts as one of those options.

This means Computer Science GCSE now contributes to the success rate of a school, which is why it was so vital that it was included.

Computing replaces ICT on the National Curriculum

The ICT has been scrapped on the curriculum… Reform of ICT was a key demand of Next Gen Skills – Recommendation 1 – it will now be replaced with a Computing Programme of Study, with computer science principles at its core and replacing the ICT brand.